Hurricane Sandy: The Day After 10/30/2012

Get the latest updates on the destruction left behind by the storm

Hurricane Sandy, the superstorm that yesterday became the largest storm to make landfall north of North Carolina, has left an estimated 6 to 7 million East Coast residents without power and caused millions of dollars worth of damage.

Sandy, which weakened considerably as it moved inland, is now a tropical storm centered around southern Pennsylvania, about 90 miles west of Philadelphia.

We’ll continue to monitor and collect information on Sandy here throughout today, with a particular emphasis on the damage she has left behind.

The Associated Press is reporting 16 deaths from the storm, including seven in New York, which President Barack Obama has declared a federal disaster area, along with Long Island.

The more southern and eastern areas of New York City were among the hardest hit. Storm surge and near-record rainfall caused widespread flooding, while high winds knocked out power for more than a million of the city’s residents at various times throughout the night, according to power utility Con Edison.

“This is the largest storm-related outage in our history," said Con Edison Senior Vice President for Electric Operations John Miksad. The previous record was the more than 200,000 outages caused by Hurricane Irene in 2011. As of 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, about 634,000 New York City residents were without power.

New Jersey is among the worst state hit by Sandy. Even before the storm made landfall, cities in the state’s south experienced significant flooding from storm surge pushed inland by Sandy. Gov. Chris Christie ordered the state’s coastal areas to be evacuated and at a briefing before landfall lambasted the mayor of coastal Atlantic City for urging residents to hunker down in shelters instead of evacuate.

“"For whatever reason, Mayor Langford urged people to stay in shelters in the city, despite my admonition to evacuate," Christie said, adding that Langford and some Atlantic City residents were upset about an evacuation last year.

“Now I’m going to have federal and state emergency personnel going in there … with live down electrical wires all over the place risking their lives. Because Mayor Langford was worried some of his people were angry? That’s not leadership everybody.”

An estimated 2.4 million people lost power in New Jersey due to the storm, Christie said Tuesday morning. It is the largest outage ever in the state, according to energy utility PNEG.

National Hurricane Center:There are high-wind warnings in effect, including gale force winds over the coastal waters of the Mid-Atlantic states, New York, and New England. Storm warnings are in effect for portions of the Mid-Atlantic coastal waters. Flood and flash flood watches and warnings are in effect over portions of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast states.

“I live in Greenwich Village and so am sitting here without power on a waning laptop battery. This storm is certainly a preview of the future. For example, the surge at the Battery was about 12 feet as I understand it. Toward the end of this century, adding in sea level rise and stronger storms, it would be 17 feet according to a projection we made and published earlier this year in Nature Climate Change.

The current situation is a total mess. Imagine the disaster with 5 more feet of water. We need to be better prepared for this prospect but we also need to cut our greenhouse gas emissions, or that future will become inevitable.”

-Michael OppenheimerDepartment of Geosciences and Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International AffairsPrinceton University